Today is Day 22 of NaNoWriMo! My total for day 21 of NaNoWriMo was 1,489 words. Not as much as I wanted to accomplish, but it is, what it is.
All passages were in order from yesterday's post, so here's what I wrote:
My brow rose. That didn’t make any sense. It didn’t make sense for her question my answer. Sure, it wasn’t exactly honest, but being a Dragon herself, she wouldn’t have a reason to question me. As Dragons, we automatically assumed all questions and actions were platonic, since we received only one destined mate from the gods in our life, and we didn’t pursue other dragons that weren’t our destined mate like Humans did. Does she suspect my intentions? It was plausible, but I had ruled that out some time ago. Since we were on the same team, I knew she’d decide there wasn’t a possibility of us coming together. Quite the surprise she’d get when I could pursue her.
Rinneth knelt down and inspected a wall. I walked closer and then jumped when a loud click echoed in the hall.
Rinneth grinned and continued to push on the wall. “I knew there had to be a reason for this hall.”
“Here, let me help.” I pushed as hard as I could on the wall, and between the two of us, we finally managed to move the hidden wall, just as Vamir and Karla arrived.
“Nice timing,” I said.
Vamir smirked. “I try.”
When Rinneth squealed the two of us jumped and watched her nearly jump on a large metal chest that had been hidden by the the false wall. Zaro sniffed the box and growled just as Rinneth attempted to open it.
She stopped and looked at her pet. “What’s wrong, Zaro? Trapped by a spell?”
The Calacour bared his teeth and hissed.
“Let me see,” Vamir said. “This priest spec I’m running has some talents in the mage path.”
“Smart move,” Rinneth said as she moved out of his way.
Vamir knelt down in front of the box and went to work inspecting it himself. He nodded when he understood what was sealing the box and grabbed several items from his many pouches. Rinneth and I watched as he chanted a spell and sprinkled the ingredients over the chest.
“There, all set,” Vamir said when his chant was over. “That was one nasty trap. Good thing Zaro noticed it. Who wants to open the chest?”
“You should,” Rinneth said. “You broke the spell and”--she looked around the room cautiously--“usually, when map boxes are opened, mobs spawn in great numbers as part of the difficulty of the questline. Vesser and I will need to be ready and we’ll need to push a fast pace to the exit because these NPCs won’t stop spawning. If we all die, we’ll have to clear the hall again and repeat all of this.”
I readied my shield and sword. “I’d like to get out of here.”
Rinneth snickered and pat Zaro on the head. “If I didn’t know any better I thought you weren’t having fun.”
“I don’t know what makes you think that,” I responded sarcastically back.
Vamir and Rinneth laughed. Vamir opened the chest and quickly snatched up the rolled piece of paper when NPC enemies began spawning in hoards. Rinneth and I glanced each other and then rushed in. We cut the mobs down, as fast as possible, but just as Rinneth had said, more spawned to take their place. Vamir threw out heals as quick as he could and even threw in a few attacks when he could manage it.
I threw an emergency shield on Rinneth when her health grew dangerously low, giving Vamir the time to get a strong heal off on her. This map retrieval had gone from irritating to flat out ridiculous. My irritation with this run had me making a rash decision to pop all my cooldowns to drive my holy power to its max while keeping my defense nearly impenetrable. I activated my light beam offensive attack and used all the holy power I had generated into a focused beam in front of me. Rinneth simultaneously summed the max number of Calacour she could and let them run loose.
“Over kill you two?” Vamir asked when the hall was empty.
“Nope,” Rinneth said. “Now, keep moving. The exit is at the end of the hall and these NPCs will spawn again soon.”
Just as she finished speaking, several mob hoards began spawning behind us, pushing us into a sprint. Enemies began appear before us, but Rinneth sent her pets after them and urged us to keep running. The swirling magic portal to get out of this place came into view, spurring us on.
An enemy jumped Vamir, but Rinneth reacted quickly and attacked the snake humanoid. “Keep going!”
We nodded as she took care of the creature and jumped through the portal. My breath came in ragged bursts as we stared at the portal. Each second felt like forever as we waited for Rinneth to burst through.
“This is torture,” Vamir said.
“Should we go back in after her?” I asked.
“Go back in for whom?” a female voice asked behind us.
Vamir and I jumped and spun around to find Rinneth grinned at us. I looked at the portal and then back at her, and then repeated.
“How--”
She giggled and winked. “It’s a secret.”
“Well, I have the map piece,” Vamir said. “I think you should tell us ho--”
Rinneth held up the map. “You sure about that?”
Vamir frantically searched his person and then looked at her with surprise when he was unable to find the map. I too was completely dumbfounded.
“How?” I asked again.
She grinned in a way that came off a somewhat seductive. “Just because I’m not running my rogue class, doesn’t mean I don’t know how to be rogue-like.” She turned around and began speaking in guild chat. “We have the map piece. How are you guys doing?”
“We’ll get back to you on that in a minute,” Ramos grunted out.
“Do you want help?” she asked tentatively.
“No, no we’re fine,” he said.
Rinneth shrugged. “Okay, we’ll go back to the guild hall and work on figuring out how to expand it.”
“No don’t!” Erin yelled. “We need help.”
“No, Ramos said you were all set,” she said.
“At least send us Vamir, lass,” Thuldren said.
“Yeah, we could at least use him,” Rial added.
“Nope, we’re going back to the guild hall,” Vamir said. “It’s not like you don’t have a healing class, Rial.”
“We’re in combat at the moment, buddy,” Rial said. “Can’t switch.”
I tried not to laugh. “Not our fault. We’ll see you guys then.”
Rinneth summoned one of her fancy mounts, a spectral tiger, and Vamir and I stared at it. The one she had used to get here had been a fiery Calacour, and neither of us could deny we wanted some of these mounts.
Rinneth looked at us with confusion. “What’s wrong? Don’t you want to get away from here?”
“Um, where did you get this mount?” Vamir asked.
“It’s a raid boss drop.” She grinned. “I see. Do you guy want to go for some mount runs?”
Vamir and I looked at each other and then nodded at her hopefully.
She giggled and then activated her menu. “Okay, we can do that. Let’s go back to the guild and I’ll have you take a look at my mounts and see if any of those interest you. If not, I’ll work on a list of available ones that will be easy for you two to get.”
I smiled. “You’re the best.”
Rinneth grinned. “I know. Now let’s get back to town and port over to the guild.”
Vamir and I mounted up on our basic horses and the three of us rode through the forest towards the closest town.
Chapter 10
(Rinneth)
I opened my eyes slowly as the simulation pod released me and remained still to allow the spinning to go away before opening the pod. Swinging my legs over, I hopped out of the pod and looked out my closed balcony doors at the darkening sky as I stretched. This past week had been a good one. The guild was building up slowly with everyone pitching in. Our arena matches were going extremely well. Even with us losing quite a few of them, we were still positive overall. And I was close to having a full tournament legal PvP gear set for my Calacour spec. I’d be able to focus on my Dargona spec soon, which would be nice. I didn’t like feeling forced into one spec for my beast tamer class. I didn’t like being forced to play one class, but that was easier to deal with than just being a Calacour tamer.
The team was also getting into the PvE side of the game. I had managed to help Rial and Vamir a new mount, and Vesser had been so upset he hadn’t gotten something, I did a few extra raid runs with here, only for him to still end up empty handed.